Rohan O'Grady

Rohan O'Grady (July 23, 1922 – March 17, 2014) is the pen name of Vancouver-born Canadian novelist June Margaret O'Grady (Skinner).[1] After graduating from Lord Byng Secondary School in 1940 Skinner worked for the Capilano Golf and Country Club as assistant resident manager, and then in the library at the Vancouver Sun.[2] There she met husband Frederick Snowden Skinner with whom she raised three children in West Vancouver.[2]

June Margaret O'Grady (Skinner)
Born23 July 1922
Vancouver, Canada
Died17 March 2014
West Vancouver, Canada
Pen nameRohan O'Grady, A. Carleon
Alma materLord Byng High School
GenreFiction, Gothic Fiction
Notable worksLet's Kill Uncle
Years active1961-1981
SpouseFrederick Snowden Skinner

Writing history

Between 1961 and 1970, Skinner published four novels as Rohan O'Grady. Her fifth and final work, The May Spoon, was released in 1981 and credited to A. Carleon[2] (Ann Carleon is the name of Skinner's great-grandmother). Her third book, Let's Kill Uncle, was her most successful and was made into a movie Let's Kill Uncle by the legendary horror-film producer William Castle in 1966, starring Nigel Green, Mary Badham, Pat Cardi and Robert Pickering. First editions of Skinner's second book, Pippin's Journal, are prized by collectors for their illustrations by Edward Gorey.[3][4]

After nearly three decades of relative obscurity, Skinner returned to public attention as the subject of a January 2009 feature in The Believer, the monthly literary magazine published by McSweeney's. In the piece, "A Certain Kind of Murder," author Theo Schell-Lambert writes of his childhood encounter with Let's Kill Uncle and his search for its mysterious author.[5] Like Shell-Lambert, The Guardian political cartoonist, Martin Rowson, was deeply affected by his childhood reading of Let's Kill Uncle and credits the book for changing his life and influencing his choice of career.[6][7]

As a result of the Believer article, Let's Kill Uncle was reprinted by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2010 with an endorsement from Donna Tartt; it was released the following year in the United States.[8] The 2014 Spanish edition, Matemos al tio,[9] features a reproduction of the original Let's Kill Uncle cover drawn by Edward Gorey in 1963.[10]

Skinner's books, which are often set in her native British Columbia, are characterized by a strong gothic streak and a tendency to dismiss genre conventions.[11] For example, though she commonly features child protagonists, she subjects them to both emotional intensity and physical violence rarely found in "young adult" novels. This has been attributed in part to Skinner's independence from the larger literary culture. She did not publish her first book until she was nearly 40, and she did her writing alone in suburban West Vancouver while raising three children.

Literary scholar Rebecca A. Brown examines Let's Kill Uncle in the context of black comedy, gothic tropes, and popular culture in her chapter, "Murderous Misfits and Misguided Mentors in Rohan O'Grady's Let's Kill Uncle."[12] Fiction critic Zach Vasquez notes that the novel's "dark whimsy and macabre charm is offset by a cutting and unsentimental look into the psychology of children, as well as the moral compromises we make as adults."[13]

A popular metal band from Perth, Australia, named itself "Let's Kill Uncle" after the movie, and British singer-songwriter, Morrissey, was also inspired by the film to name his 1991 solo album, Kill Uncle.[14][15]

O'Grady's literary papers are held by Special Collections and Rare Books: Manuscript Collections, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C.[16]

Bibliography
  • O’Houlihan's Jest, MacMillan, New York 1961. Gollancz, London, 1961.
  • Pippin's Journal; Or, Rosemary Is for Remembrance, MacMillan, New York, 1962. Gollancz, London, 1962. (Also published as The Curse of the Montrolfes and The Master of Montrolfe Hall.)
  • Let's Kill Uncle, MacMillan, New York, 1963. Longmans, London, 1964. Bloomsbury, London, 2010. Bloomsury, New York, 2011.
  • Bleak November, Dial Press, New York, 1970. Michael Joseph, London, 1971.
  • The May Spoon, Beaufort, New York, 1981. Methuen, London, 1984. (As A. Carleon.)
gollark: READ. THE. DOCS.
gollark: Have you considered not constantly asking for voice chat?
gollark: The difference is literally not possible to see if the screen is 20Hz.
gollark: Sooooo just use + 0.5 instead...?
gollark: If you happen to be coroutine.yielding the event you just queued, that counts.

References
  1. "June Margaret nee O'Grady Skinner," The Vancouver Sun, 22 March 2014
  2. ABCBookworld, "O'Grady, Rohan"
  3. Brad Middleton, review of Pippin's Journal: Or Rosemary is for Remembrance, 11 February 2017
  4. Mark Monday, review of The Curse of the Montrolfes, Goodreads, 20 December 2017.
  5. Theo Schell-Lambert, "A Certain Kind of Murder," The Believer, January 2009
  6. Martin Rowson, "Let's Kill Uncle drew me into a deliciously horrible adult world," The Guardian, 7 August 2013
  7. BBC Radio 4: A Good Read, 19 March 2019
  8. Wall Street Journal, "In Brief: Let's Kill Uncle," 2 April 2011.
  9. Matemos al tío
  10. Mark Dery, Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey (Little Brown, 2018).
  11. Mark Monday, review of O'Houlihan's Jest, Goodreads, 18 February 2018.
  12. Rebecca A. Brown, "Murderous Misfits and Misguided Mentors in Rohan O'Grady's Let's Kill Uncle," in Monica Flegel and Christopher Parkes, eds., Cruel Children in Popuar Texts and Cultures: Critical Approaches to Children's Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 127-149.
  13. Zach Vasquez, "A Hard World for Little Things: 10 Dark Stories of Kids in Peril," Crimereads, 6 December 2019
  14. X-Press Magazine, "Let's Kill Uncle," 3 April 2014.
  15. Simon Goddard, Mozipedia: The Encyclopaedia of Morrissey and the Smiths, Random House (2012), 209.
  16. SFU Special Collections
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